In the rear foyer, the manor’s welcoming warmth enveloped them, carrying tantalizing aromas from the kitchen a few paces down the hall. “Showers before breakfast or breakfast first?” asked Mona, glancing first to her sister and then to Pauline as she stripped off her mittens.
“I’m fine either way,” said Pauline, pleasantly surprised to be included in the sisters’ plans.
“Showers first,” said Linnea firmly, with as much implied necessity as if it were a muggy afternoon in mid-August and they had run a half marathon. Mona laughed indulgently, and they agreed to meet at the foot of the grand oak staircase in the foyer in a half hour. Pauline fairly sprinted off to get ready, but not without a fleeting twinge of worry that she might be intruding upon the sisters’ reunion. She considered leaving them to themselves, but her reluctance to walk into the banquet hall alone won out. If she were at the Cherokee Rose Quilters’ Benefit Retreat, she could have chosen from among a dozen longtime friends who would have been happy to have her take an empty seat at their table. Here, she knew no one.
Pauline was ready a full five minutes before the sisters descended the stairs, so she passed the time admiring the artwork displayed in the foyer. Stunning quilts hung from the second-floor balcony, and on the foyer walls were sepia-toned and black-and-white photographs of several generations of the Bergstrom family. Interspersed among them were several paintings of the manor and the surrounding estate. Although they had been created with considerable skill and reverence, the paintings were not dated, and Pauline could not make out the signature, a mere jumble of initials, one of which could have been a “B.” She wondered who the artist was, whether he or she was one of Sylvia’s ancestors or if the paintings were more recent, perhaps the gifts of a former camper who was as confident with a brush and paint as with needle and thread.
She was studying a curious painting, a landscape with what appeared to be the charred ruins of a log cabin in the middle distance, when Linnea and Mona arrived, tote bags full of fabric, notions, and tools slung over their shoulders. Pauline wished she had thought to bring her supplies along too. Now she would have to race upstairs for them between breakfast and the start of class. She hoped her poor planning wouldn’t cost her a seat near the sisters.
In the banquet hall, Pauline, Linnea, and Mona marveled at the sight of a lavish buffet set out upon two long tables near the windows overlooking the rear of the manor. The campers had been promised a continental breakfast, but as they carried their trays of delicacies to an unoccupied table, Pauline and the sisters agreed that the offering of buttery pastries, fresh fruit, Greek yogurts, and cranberry walnut granola far exceeded their expectations.
“All this, an entire week of luxury and quilting fun, for free,” sighed Mona happily, stirring cream into her coffee.
“All of this for the cost of our labor,” Linnea corrected her. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, or a free breakfast either. But since our labor benefits Project Linus, it’s a trade I’m very happy to make.”
“Me too,” Pauline chimed in. “I bet everyone here is.”
As she looked around the room, Pauline saw women of all ages and races and backgrounds and demographics, united not only by their love of quilting but also in their eagerness to share their talents and time. She had no doubt that each of them would have been willing to make quilts for children in need even without the benefit of a week at Elm Creek Manor. Quilters were the most generous people she had ever known. Even Brenda, for all her faults, made quilts for charity—although she never volunteered to teach at the guild’s benefit retreats, nor did she assist in anyone else’s classes.
Thoughts of Brenda naturally led to thoughts of the other Cherokee Rose Quilters. “Every year, my quilting guild hosts a retreat at a resort near Atlanta to raise money for local charities,” Pauline said, almost without meaning to. “It’s in a similar spirit to Quiltsgiving, except we charge a fee for food and lodging, we donate the profits, and everyone keeps whatever quilts they make.”
“Lucky you, to have two quilt retreats in the same year,” said Mona.
“Well, actually—” A nervous, illogical impulse compelled Pauline to glance at her watch. “My guild’s retreat is going on right now.”
“Then why are you here instead of there?” asked Linnea.
Why indeed. “It seemed . . . time for a change.”
When the sisters regarded her with unmistakable curiosity, Pauline glanced away and changed the subject to the first thing her gaze lit upon—the young, blond college student on crutches, struggling to make her way from the buffet to a table with her breakfast in hand. “Oh, look at that poor girl. Someone should carry her plate for her.”
She pushed back her chair, eager to be that person and thereby avoid more uncomfortable questions, but before she could stand, another camper—Jocelyn, the African-American middle school teacher from Michigan—appeared at the struggling girl’s side. They exchanged a few words, and with a grateful smile and a nod, Michaela handed Jocelyn her plate and they made their way to a nearby table. Fortunately for Pauline, the distraction sufficed; Linnea and Mona had abandoned the subject of Pauline’s strange absence from her guild’s retreat in favor of possible color combinations for their Giving Quilts. Pauline left them to it, explaining that she had to retrieve her quilt supplies from her room before the start of class.
“Save me a seat?” she asked as she rose and cleared away her dishes. She waited for the sisters to nod before hurrying off.
The classroom turned out to be a small section of the ballroom set apart by moveable partitions, and Pauline arrived just in time to claim an empty seat beside Linnea. Gretchen Hartley, a thin, gray-haired, seventysomething Elm Creek Quilter clad in a dark brown corduroy skirt and a beige twinset, stood at the front of the room smiling a welcome to each student as she entered. Behind her hung that year’s Giving Quilt—a charming confection of small red and larger purple squares set on point upon a light cream background framed by a double border, one narrow, one wide. The arrangement of blocks was simple and pleasing, reminding Pauline of bubbles rising from the bottom of an aquarium or colorful balloons floating up into a clear summer sky. Studying the quilt, she easily deduced which quick-piecing techniques Gretchen would likely employ so that the students would be able to assemble their tops within a matter of days. Pauline smiled as she arranged her supplies neatly on the table beside her sewing machine, confident that she would be able to achieve her quilt tally for the week.
At precisely one minute after nine o’clock—enough time to grant stragglers a grace period while still remaining within the realm of the punctual—Gretchen raised her hands for their attention. “Good morning,” she said. “For those of you I didn’t have the opportunity to meet at registration, I’m Gretchen Hartley, and it’s no exaggeration to say that I’m thoroughly delighted to be leading the Giving Quilt class this year.”
Pauline didn’t doubt it. Gretchen fairly glowed with warmth and eagerness as she gestured to the quilt hanging upon the wall behind her. “This quilt may look complicated, especially if you’re a beginner.” Gretchen peered questioningly around the room over the tops of her glasses, and a handful of students, including Mona, raised their hands. “Well, never fear. Appearances can be deceiving, and in this case, they definitely are. These Resolution Square blocks are composed of simple squares and rectangles, joined with easy straight seams. It’s the on-point arrangement of the blocks that lends the quilt its more complex appearance.”
The campers studied the quilt and nodded thoughtfully.
“We’ll begin by choosing our fabrics,” Gretchen said. “Feel free to dig through the classroom stash if you can’t find exactly what you want among the yardage you brought from home. For the pieced blocks, please choose one half yard of a dark print, one and a quarter yards of a medium, and one and a half yards for the background. You’ll also need one and three-quarter yard
s for the inner border and two yards for the outer border. Those can be the same dark and medium fabrics you use for the blocks, or something else entirely. It’s up to you. The quilt police aren’t permitted on the premises.”
A ripple of laughter passed through the room as the quilters dug into their tote bags and satchels, pulling out fabrics, draping them side by side upon the tables, and standing back to scrutinize them, heads to one side, glasses on or off as necessary. Some campers took Gretchen up on her offer and searched through the milk crates full of fabric at the back of the room until they found the exact shade of blue or the most cheerful novelty prints they needed. Others wandered through the rows peeking at their classmates’ stashes and proposing trades.
Pauline had chosen a jewel-toned purple-and-red grape print for her borders and was weighing the merits of several different fabrics in complementary hues when someone in the row behind her said, “Excuse me—Pauline, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s me,” she replied, glancing over her shoulder to find Jocelyn turning a hopeful look alternately upon her and her fabric stash. “What can I do for you?”
“Could I interest you in a swap?” Jocelyn gestured to one of Pauline’s fabrics, an ocean-blue textured solid with a pattern like crumpled parchment paper. “Now that I’ve seen the sample quilt, I’d like to use lots of different fabrics to give mine a scrappy look, but I didn’t bring enough blues from home. You’re welcome to take anything I have in trade—except the blues and oranges, of course. I’ll need those.”
“Sure.” Pauline admired Jocelyn’s neatly folded yardage arranged in orderly stacks on the table beside her sewing machine. Her stash seemed to be composed entirely of nineteenth-century reproduction fabrics fresh from the store. Pauline compared several different reds and purples to her grapevine border fabric before she settled upon an exquisite red paisley. “Blue and orange, huh?” she said as they exchanged fabrics. “That’ll be a bold combination.”
“Those are our school colors,” Jocelyn explained. “We’re the proud Westfield Wildcats.”
“Go, fight, win,” replied Pauline, and Jocelyn smiled back.
“I’m using my school colors too,” Michaela interjected. She sat at the workstation beside Jocelyn with her cast-bound foot stuck awkwardly into the aisle. “Red, black, and white for the St. Andrew’s Crusaders.”
“Very nice.” Pauline nodded appreciatively as she studied the younger woman’s fabrics. She would have considered that palette too strong and dynamic for a child’s quilt, but the combination worked, perhaps because the Scottie dog print Michaela had set aside for the borders added a note of whimsy. “I feel like I lack imagination or school spirit or both,” she added with mock dismay. “I could have chosen old gold and white for Georgia Tech, but instead I played it safe and went with purple, red, and cream, like the sample. I guess I’m just a copycat.”
“But wouldn’t you have still been a copycat if you had chosen school colors like Michaela and I did?” said Jocelyn, amused.
“I suppose I would have been, just in a different way,” Pauline agreed, laughing at herself. She knew no one in that room would second-guess her choices. A glance around the room showed that she was not the only camper following Gretchen’s lead. And why not? Gretchen’s version was eye-catching and appealing, although Pauline had selected rich tone-on-tone fabrics rather than the small florals Gretchen favored.
“Hold on a sec.” Michaela dug into her fabric stash and triumphantly pulled out a half yard of fabric badly in need of a hot iron, but even wrinkled, the white lacy pattern on a red-orange background was quite pretty. “Jocelyn, could you use this? I was going to, but it’s not quite red enough for my quilt.”
Jocelyn’s eyes lit up. “Yes, thanks. It’s perfect.”
As Jocelyn and Michaela worked out a trade, Pauline finished selecting her own fabrics, admired Linnea’s and Mona’s, and awaited Gretchen’s next instructions. When all the students were ready to proceed, Gretchen told them they would cut their background pieces first. Smiling, she added, “This will give you time to make sure you’re happy with your focus fabrics before you cut them into pieces.”
Next Gretchen gestured to the cutting tables set up along the perimeter of the classroom and instructed the students to cut three strips three and a half inches wide, selvage to selvage, and then to cut the strips into sixty-four two-by-three-and-a-half-inch rectangles. While waiting for a turn at a cutting table, Pauline took her cream background fabric to an ironing station at the back of the classroom, sprayed it generously with sizing, and pressed with a hot iron until the fabric was dry and stiff. She did the same when Gretchen told them to cut strips from their dark fabrics and make sixty-four three-and-a-half-inch squares.
Michaela eyed Pauline curiously as she returned to her sewing station with her stiffened red squares in hand. “Do you mind if I ask you a question?” Without waiting for a reply, she asked, “Why are you spraying your fabrics with that stuff?”
“Sizing stabilizes the pieces.” Pauline handed Michaela a red fabric square, which now had the texture and rigidity of construction paper. “It requires a little extra time and trouble, but it makes the pieces easier to work with and less prone to stretching and distortion when I sew.”
Michaela nodded thoughtfully and handed back the red square. “Cool. Mind if I copy you?”
Pauline laughed. “I think we’ve already established where I stand on copying. Go for it. Now, do you mind if I ask you a question?”
“Go right ahead.”
“How did you hurt your foot?”
“Actually, it’s my ankle, and I fell.” Michaela hesitated. “Or I was dropped. Depends who you ask. Either way, it was a tragic cheerleading accident. Tragic for me, anyway. And possibly no accident.”
Pauline couldn’t remember any other time in her life when she had heard the words “tragic” and “cheerleading” in the same sentence. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt a lot?”
“Not so much anymore.” Michaela sighed and frowned at her cast. “Although I won’t be throwing any back handsprings any time soon.”
Pauline shook her head regretfully. “Me neither.”
Michaela stared at her in utter surprise for a moment until she realized Pauline was joking. “Don’t rule it out,” she teased, or perhaps it was a warning. “I could teach you.”
“Oh, no. No thanks. I’d break my neck.”
“You wouldn’t,” Michaela insisted. “I’m a very good coach.”
“I’m sure you are, when you’re working with someone with a certain bare minimum of athletic ability. That would rule me out.”
Michaela shook her head. “Don’t talk like that. You just need to pace yourself.”
“Pace myself?”
“That’s right. Pace: ‘Positive Attitudes Change Everything.’”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Pauline said, but she knew it wasn’t only her attitude preventing her from turning back handsprings across the ballroom floor.
Just then, Gretchen called for the campers’ attention, and after confirming that they were ready to move on, she instructed them to cut even more strips, this time two inches wide, selvage to selvage, from their dark and background fabrics. Cheerfully the campers set themselves to the task, taking turns at the cutting stations, chatting as they worked, and admiring one another’s fabric combinations. When they had returned to their places with their carefully trimmed strips in hand, Gretchen seated herself at the sewing machine at the front of the room. With the help of a strategically placed mirror overhead, she demonstrated how to sew a dark strip to each background strip lengthwise to make a strip pair. After pressing the seam toward the dark fabric with a hot iron, she took up her acrylic ruler and rotary cutter and neatly sliced across the seam to make a pair of contrasting squares joined along one side. “You’ll need sixty-four square pairs, two for each
Resolution Square block,” she told them as she deftly cut more from the strip until only a small scrap remained, trailing threads. “Be sure to square up the end if necessary so that your strips lie straight and true. We need perfect right angles, no slouching.”
The students laughed, and a happy buzz filled the classroom as they measured and cut with care. Pauline made quick work of her fabric strips and soon had all of her square pairs arranged in neat piles beside her sewing machine. She glanced around the room, certain she would be the first to finish and preparing herself to assist anyone who seemed to be struggling. To her surprise, she spotted another quilter at the back of the room who must have accomplished the last step even more swiftly, because she was already tidying up her work area. Karen, Pauline quickly recalled, thinking back to the Candlelight ceremony. Karen Wise. She was carin’ for two young sons and was wise in the ways of quilting because she worked in a quilt shop not far from the Elm Creek Valley.
Pauline felt a quick, unreasonable surge of competitiveness, and she quickly turned back around and began to studiously organize her cut block pieces. Karen Wise must have made that pattern before, Pauline told herself, although she knew that wasn’t possible, since Gretchen had designed the quilt especially for that year’s Quiltsgiving. She sighed and sat back in her chair, impatient with herself. What did it matter who finished first, who chose the most harmonious fabrics, whose quilt was the most meticulously sewn? There were quilting competitions aplenty, but this wasn’t one of them. The object of the week was to learn, make new friends, and sew quilts for children in need, not to outperform her fellow campers.
Sometimes Pauline wondered whether she was too proud, whether the true spirit of quilting eluded her. Sometimes too, she feared that it was that same foolish pride rather than a noble sacrifice that had cost her a cherished place among the Cherokee Rose Quilters.
Pauline had known the Cherokee Rose Quilters by reputation long before she befriended any of them. The most exclusive guild in Georgia, they were admired and respected for their talents; their superb quilt museum in Savannah, founded decades earlier with a bequest from a wealthy member; their diligent efforts to preserve the state’s quilting heritage; and their charitable works. As a group they had accumulated an impressive number of awards, ribbons, grants, and other recognitions, and every Best of Show prize at every state and county fair for the past forty-five years had gone to a Cherokee Rose Quilter unless no one from the guild had submitted an entry. It was perhaps inevitable that their success evoked a fair share of envy, especially since they capped their membership at twelve and filled rare vacancies only after a lengthy application and interview process. Through the years, some of the state’s most gifted quiltmakers had been denied membership for reasons their admirers could not fathom, and occasionally rejection inspired some disgruntled candidates to create similarly small, exclusive guilds of their own. But none of the groups that emulated the Cherokee Rose Quilters could match their success or acquire equal fame, and most eventually disbanded.
The Giving Quilt Page 6
